Your link made some valid points, however I feel it is overreaching to call it a scam, at worst it'd be FUD. If Iron does what it claims to do (stop the browser from phoning home), then it seems legitimate to me even if chrome could manually be configured in a similar manor.

I guess instead of creating a chrome fork, he could provide instructions to end users on how to disable the phone home mechanisms in mainline chrome, but it still might be more convenient to install a browser which isn't hard coded to call google by default in the first place.

I know when I install firefox, I go into about:config and strip out all references to google's web services, but what sucks is that this has to be repeated for each user account on the system. Once in a while I'll forget to do this for new accounts and the browser starts making unrequested connections to google. It would be better for me to have a firefox executable where defaults were not hardcoded to contact google.

Edit: I also install adblock, ghostery, etc, but it has to be repeated for each user/computer/etc... It would be useful to me if someone released a version with these configured as defaults. I could probably do it myself, but then it would be criticised as a scam

Your link made some valid points, however I feel it is overreaching to call it a scam, at worst it'd be FUD.

The reason people call Iron a scam is because it's primary function is to trick people into downloading an unnecessary browser pure to get money from ad sales.

Granted it's a pretty harmless scam in that it doesn't directly hurt users (though I'd argue it does promote complacency, which is harmful).

If Iron does what it claims to do (stop the browser from phoning home), then it seems legitimate to me even if chrome could manually be configured in a similar manor.

I guess instead of creating a chrome fork, he could provide instructions to end users on how to disable the phone home mechanisms in mainline chrome, but it still might be more convenient to install a browser which isn't hard coded to call google by default in the first place.

You can disable most of what Iron does in regular Chrome and those that you cannot, are disabled in Chromium. Iron offers no security benefits what-so-ever.

Edit: I also install adblock, ghostery, etc, but it has to be repeated for each user/computer/etc... It would be useful to me if someone released a version with these configured as defaults. I could probably do it myself, but then it would be criticised as a scam

It depends how you market it. If you advertised it as the a "secured version of Firefox", then you would be misleading people into believing you've fixed some security flaws within Firefox. However if you advertised it as "Firefox with more secure defaults", then that would be fine.

The problem is most people don't understand this stuff, and the Iron devs are deliberately exploiting those users for their own personal financial gain.

In many ways, they're little better than the fake security software and some inexperienced users fall for.

"The reason people call Iron a scam is because it's primary function is to trick people into downloading an unnecessary browser pure to get money from ad sales."

So he has ads on his website, do you criticise every project that makes money from web ads? I for one don't like ads, but I'm not convinced this is worth fussing over.

"You can disable most of what Iron does in regular Chrome and those that you cannot, are disabled in Chromium. Iron offers no security benefits what-so-ever."

Of course chrome's default behaviour can be overridden, but there's still nothing scam-like about releasing a browser where the defaults are set to send less information to google.

I'm just not clear on if your opposition is *really* to the browser itself (which I think is a perfectly fine idea), or if you are uncomfortable of the hypocrisy of using google tracking javascripts on the same pages hosting the Iron browser project. I wonder if he'd receive more or less criticism by going with yahoo for ad revenue?

If you think he shouldn't be entitled to any ad revenue at all, well...Haha, I don't have the answers Laurence, but gosh that's mean.